8*1000m

Some days you just don't want to know. You wake up and you just can't be bothered. The fight has left and the motivation has disappeared. This was one of those days.

As I ran down to the river, I kept wondering to myself if I shouldn't prolong the warm-up for another couple of kilometres, just to push back the start of the intervals. The programme for the day was 8x1000m off 400m rest. Since I didn't have enough time, I had already decided that I could only manage 300m rest but the problem was that just now I didn't even want to start.

I cleared the unlit path with the potholes down to the river and into the streetlight by the road alongside the Seine and finally decided to go for it. I started the first rep but without enthusiasm and definitely not flat out. The recovery went well and I continued the rest of the session as I began. I was telling myself that since I was doing 8 of them and I was supposed to be at 90% of max HR then that didn't mean running them flat out. No idea of the times that I was doing but I just kept hoping that they were all above 15km/h because frankly some of them felt a little slow but sod it ...

Only when I got back that I was able to look at what I'd achieved:

3:48, 3:41, 3:58, 3:37, 3:48, 3:51, 3:50, 3:55

Both the third and the last reps were running uphill. First from the river into the park and then up the hill from Maisons Laffitte to Le Mesnil. Both of these hills are far worse than Conflans so I'm actually quite chuffed with what I managed to do. The hamstrings were aching from Sunday's run and I didn't have any go in my legs whereas the heartrate was quite manageable.

12.9km all up in 58 minutes or an average of 4:32 per km. That's all of the tough stuff done now before the weekend.